Semiconductor devices are used in a variety of electronic applications, such as personal computers, cell phones, digital cameras, and other electronic equipment. Semiconductor devices are typically fabricated by sequentially depositing insulating or dielectric layers, conductive layers, and semiconductive layers of material over a wafer, and patterning the various material layers using lithography process to form circuit components and elements thereon. Many integrated circuits are typically manufactured on a single wafer, and individual dies on the wafer are singulated by sawing between the integrated circuits along a scribe line. The individual dies are typically packaged separately, in multi-chip modules, or in other types of packaging, for example.
In the lithography process, a photoresist is applied to a wafer. A thin layer of the photoresist is spread on the surface of the wafer, and the photoresist is exposed and developed to form a pattern in the semiconductor manufacturing process. These developed patterns now have very fine detail, and some issues may cause unsatisfactory defects in the developed photoresist during the lithography process.
Although existing devices for a lithography apparatus have been generally adequate for their intended purposes, they have not been entirely satisfactory in all respects. Consequently, it would be desirable to provide a solution for improving the quality of the photoresist of the wafer during the lithography process.